Change or impeachment

US invites Iran and Syria to Iraq

Democratic Senators Carl Levin (the future head of the Senate Armed Services Committee) and Joe Biden (one of the likely presidential candidates in the 2008 elections) yesterday declared “the most urgent US priority is a change in policy towards Iraq.” The impasse in this country led to the Republican defeat in the November 7 elections and the subsequent resignation of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.

The Democratic majority in Congress considers it necessary to hold a broad international conference on Iraq, in which Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt would take part from the Islamic world. It is noteworthy that Russia previously came up with this idea.

According to Carl Levin, the withdrawal of US forces "should begin in the next four to six months." White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, while arguing that “no one wants a troop withdrawal more than the president,” nevertheless believes that such a schedule “would be a real disaster for the Iraqi people.” However, according to Bolten, “nobody is happy with the way things are now in Iraq,” and his boss “needs a fresh look at what is being done there.”

That's the view presented yesterday at a meeting with President George W. Bush by an independent commission called the Iraq Study Panel, formed by Congress in March. It is led by James Baker, Secretary of State under Bush Sr., and Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton. The commission includes the new head of the Pentagon and former head of the CIA, Robert Gates. It is known that the commission, the final recommendations of which will be known at the end of the year, advocates the redeployment of US forces from Iraq to friendly countries in the region, from where the Iraqi authorities can be promptly assisted. She also believes that neighboring Iran and Syria may be involved in the Iraqi settlement.

Today the commission is scheduled to conduct a television interview with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who paid considerable attention to the Iraqi topic in yesterday's keynote speech on foreign policy. British journalists claim that at the end of October Blair sent his man to Damascus on a secret mission. In the following days, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said that the situation in Iraq would calm down when “the Iraqis understand that the Arab world supports the peace process in their country.” Syria's ambassador to the United States said his country has good relations with all Iraqis, but conditioned Syria's participation in the talks on U.S. recognition of the failure of its policies in Iraq.

“The United States does not count oil revenues in Iraq, but its losses,” Professor Anatoly Yegorin, head of the Russian-Arab Dialogue scientific center at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Vremya Novostei, recalling that since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 Over 2,850 US military personnel were killed there and about 23,000 were wounded. “The Americans need to leave Iraq before Bush is impeached. He realizes this, and the fundamental decision to leave has already been made. But in exchange for participation in the Iraqi settlement, Iran and Syria will demand that they be “removed” from the “axis of evil” to which these countries have included the United States,” our interlocutor is sure.

Alexander SAMOKHOTKIN